Evolution of research activities and intellectual influences in information science 1996–2005: Introducing author bibliographic-coupling analysis

Author cocitation analysis (ACA) has frequently been applied over the last two decades for mapping the intellectual structure of a research field as represented by its authors. However, what is mapped in ACA is actually the structure of intellectual influences on a research field as perceived by its active authors. In this exploratory paper, by contrast, we introduce author bibliographic-coupling analysis (ABCA) as a method to map the research activities of active authors themselves for a more realistic picture of the current state of research in a field. We choose the information science (IS) field and study its intellectual structure both in terms of current research activities as seen from ABCA and in terms of intellectual influences on its research as shown from ACA. We examine how these two aspects of the intellectual structure of the IS field are related, and how they both developed during the “first decade of the Web,” 1996–2005. We find that these two citation-based author-mapping methods complement each other, and that, in combination, they provide a more comprehensive view of the intellectual structure of the IS field than either of them can provide on its own.